Blood of a Gladiator

by Ashley Gardner

  Celnus wasn’t pleased, but he bowed and obediently took the things away.

  Priscus saw me to the atrium himself, waving me off, then squaring his shoulders as the doorman went out and returned with the middle-class man. I sent Priscus a sympathetic look as I continued into the vestibule.

  Before I left, I asked the door lad to tell Celnus I wished to speak to him. When the majordomo emerged, I repeated my request to encourage Priscus to remain inside and send for me if he wished to go anywhere. Celnus again was torn between irritation and agreement, but promised to do what I asked.

  I stepped outside into the rain. The two freedmen I’d conversed with gave me a hearty farewell, and I started down the hill.

  As I walked home, I kept an eye out for the elusive vigile, but I never saw him. I was not surprised—a man who patrolled the streets every night would know the back ways through Rome better than I.

  It was a bit early for a bath—the most popular hours for them were after the midday meal—but I went in any case, wanting to wash away the sleep, sweat, and grit from the city I’d picked up as I chased after the vigile. The bathhouse was mostly empty, only a few men sitting naked on a bench in the caldarium.

  I took time to go through the bodily exercises I’d performed every day at the ludus before the lone attendant swiped off my sweat and dirt with a strigil. I was use to exercising more often, and the last few days of inactivity had made me edgy.

  The heat of the bathhouse did nothing to soothe me, and I soon plunged into the pool in the empty frigidarium, swimming to relieve my tension.

  That also did not help, because someone came upon me while I glided through the water and tried to hold my head under.

  Chapter 14

  The greatest lesson Aemil had taught me was not to panic in a dangerous situation. Trying to raise my head from the water against the strength of the man’s hands would do me no good.

  Lungs burning, I dove farther down into the pool, swimming away with a powerful pump of arms. His hold broke, and I was free. I surfaced at the far end of the small pool, gasping for breath.

  I made sure to come up with my back to a tiled wall, so he couldn’t get behind me. A large bronze fish poked out of the wall beside me, spilling clear water from its gaping mouth.

  The room was empty. The waves I’d created sloshed over the pool’s sides to wet floor mosaics depicting fish, seaweed, and Neptune’s chariot.

  I saw no one, heard no one, the sound of the fountain beside me loud in the stillness. The baths didn’t fill up until afternoon, and my assailant had caught me alone. Which meant the man, whoever he was, had been following me.

  The vigile? No, the hands that had held me were thick and strong, and the vigile was spindly. My attacker was a professional, though, knowing exactly where and how hard to push to keep me under.

  I scrambled from the pool, cascading more water over the floor, and snatched up my towel, which I’d left high on a shelf, drying off quickly. Even the frigidarium’s attendant had vanished, and I wondered if he’d been bribed.

  I changed my mind about the attendant when I saw him asleep on a stool just outside the room. He had big hands, like my attacker, but they hung limply on either side of him as he snored hard.

  I retrieved my clothes in the changing room and dressed, keeping a wary eye around me. I shared the room with an aging patrician, surrounded by his servants, none of whom paid the slightest attention to me.

  Avoiding the deepest crowds, I walked quickly home. An assassin’s knife could find my back in a throng, with no one being the wiser, including me.

  This was the second time in a short while that someone had tried to kill me. I’d been attacked the night before I’d escorted Priscus to Ostia. Who wanted me dead?

  Regulus, of course. He’d vowed to kill me. But I knew Regulus’s fighting grip, and the man who’d tried to drown me today hadn’t had it. Nor had the assailant on the street possessed Regulus’s tread and movement. Also, Regulus would want to face me, to jeer at me when he drove his blade home.

  Baffling and unnerving.

  Cassia was in the apartment when I entered. I liked that.

  I halted in the doorway, startled by the feeling. It was an ease, a relief almost, to find her puttering about, making her notes, sorting out food and utensils, or whatever else she did.

  Today she busily decorated a new table under the shelf that held the rudis. She’d set out a spray of flowers, a few candles, and a sketch on a thin board of an older man with a small, wise face.

  Cassia didn’t turn when she heard my step. “We had no shrine,” she said, as though feeling the need to explain. “We ought to honor our ancestors as much as any great family does. This is my father.” She touched the picture. “I had a better one of him, but I wasn’t allowed to bring anything with me, so I sketched another. Do you mind?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, eyes holding trepidation.

  I drew near the small table. “The ancestors can make life hard for us if we don’t appease them. I think it’s the cause of all my misfortune.”

  I joked, but only partly. I’d never known my father and barely remembered my mother. However, they could reach from Elysium, or wherever they’d ended up, to torment me if they wished.

  “I’ll add your parents,” Cassia said. “What were their names?” She returned to the eating table and took up her ever-present pen, opened her ink jar, and rolled out a bit of papyrus.

  “I don’t know.” I edged closer. “Will you add Xerxes instead?”

  Cassia’s pen scratched, she not questioning my choice. “You told me about him—close as a brother, you said. What was his full name?”

  “Who knows? We took our names when we entered the ludus, and that’s who we became. He was Xerxes. I was Leonidas.”

  She looked up at me, the tip of her pen touching her chin. “What was your name before?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t remember any other now.”

  Cassia cocked her head as she sometimes did when contemplating. “The one thing all of us never forget, deep inside, is our own name.”

  That was true. But it was a part of me no one knew, one I’d keep to myself for now.

  Courtesans and matrons had teased me trying to learn my name, or they’d demand I tell them. I’d started to claim I didn’t remember, until I almost believed it.

  Cassia regarded me for a moment or two longer, then she smiled and let me be.

  She took the papyrus slip and set it on the shrine, weighting down one corner of it with a small bronze statuette in the form of a tiny god. A household god, one of the dozens of lesser gods who guided us from day to day. It was good to honor them too.

  She returned to her stool and tablets. “What did you learn about Floriana?” she asked, poised to write. “Did you see Priscus?”

  I plunked myself down on a stool and I told her all I’d done since leaving this morning—meeting Gallus at Floriana’s, visiting Marcianus, chasing the vigile, what Priscus and I had discussed, and my encounter at the baths. Cassia noted it all down, but she looked up with a gasp as I described being held under the water in the frigidarium.

  “Was it Regulus?” she asked immediately.

  “No, the hands weren’t right. He’d also find it a cowardly way to settle his anger.”

  “Or the vigile?”

  “Not right for him either.”

  Cassia pondered this. “Unlikely that a complete stranger would try to drown you in a place he could so easily be caught. It must be connected either to you helping Priscus or to Floriana’s death. Perhaps whoever poisoned her believes you know who did it. You were there on the day.”

  “Asleep,” I reminded her. “I’m hard to wake.”

  “Is that commonly known? They might be terrified that you’d seen them. It was definitely a man who attacked you today?”

  “The hands were a man’s, large and hard.”

  “Hmm.” Cassia tapped her lip with her stylus. “We have not yet discovered wher
e Floriana was struck down. We should do so.” She closed her tablets, setting them in a neat line, and rose to fetch her palla.

  “Now?” I asked in surprise. “Where do you think we need to go?”

  “As I said before, we ask questions. Someone must know where it happened. If a man is out to kill you, and if Regulus grows rash enough to denounce you, then we must find the murderer, and quickly.”

  I was on my feet. “I agree, but if killers are stalking me in the streets, you are in danger with me.”

  “Not necessarily.” She was maddeningly calm. “As I say, no one notices a slave. Besides, I can keep a lookout in case he tries again.”

  I knew, as I took up a cloak against the continuing rain, that I would not be a master who rigidly controlled his servants. The chances of Cassia listening to me and obeying were less than a raw new gladiator winning his first bout against a primus palus.

  I put into action my second idea of a person to ask about Floriana’s murder. I led Cassia across the Forum Romana, less crowded now that afternoon had come, and to the Palatine.

  A man didn’t simply walk up the Palatine Hill and demand access to the domus of Nero, but I had no intention of going inside today. I halted outside the gate and asked the men on guard if Severus Tullius was on duty.

  Cassia proved correct that no one noticed a slave, particularly a female who kept herself covered with her head bowed. The guards’ eyes were on me, as was that of the boy sent running to inquire.

  I was in luck and Tullius was there. He emerged cheerfully from the palace, brushing past the guards with a nod, and out the gate to meet us.

  Tullius and I strolled together among the hill’s greenery in the gently falling rain. Cassia walked several paces behind us, a fold of her palla over her nose and mouth to shut out the damp.

  I asked my question. Tullius’s face creased in confusion, and he took ten or so strides in silence.

  “Why are you interested in the death of a freedwoman?” he asked. “A whore at that?”

  “Because I don’t want to be accused of her murder.”

  Tullius became still more puzzled. “Why should you be? No one would listen. You are a hero—you survived the games with your courage and skill. No Roman will let you fall.”

  “They might if enemies accuse me personally of the crime,” I said.

  Tullius’s face smoothed with understanding. “Too true, my friend. Every man has enemies, even me. A few of my fellow guards would gladly push me from the edge of this hill if it meant they were promoted ahead of me. As would a few of my cousins, to get to the money my mother left me. She was more well off than she let on, probably to keep the family from touching her for coin.” Tullius grinned briefly, then rubbed his nose, scattering droplets of rain. “I heard of the murder you speak of, but I don’t know much about it. Let me inquire, and then I will take you to the very spot. A magistrate will have written it down, embellished it into a loquacious report, and sent it to the princeps in hope he will be noticed.”

  I held up a hand. “Don’t if it will bring you trouble.”

  “I cannot fathom how it would. I’ll nose into boring documents no one wants to read and send you word. I might come myself, when I’m off duty.” Tullius sketched me a salute. “I’ll be the toast of my barracks, to say I’m friends with Leonidas the Spartan.”

  Tullius arrived at our apartment that evening, late in the eleventh hour, before the sun set. He could take us, he said, to where Floriana had been struck down.

  We walked quickly, Cassia behind us. I would rather she stay indoors, as the darkening streets were dangerous even for a Praetorian Guard and a former gladiator, but I hadn’t bothered to give her the order. I knew she’d only follow, and I’d rather have her next to me, where I could protect her, than hurrying after us in the twilight.

  I assumed Tullius would take us to a place in the Subura, near Floriana’s house, but he led us north and west and around the Capitoline and the Theatre of Marcellus to the Porticus of Octavia.

  The porticus, a memorial to Augustus’s sister, was a columned place offering shelter from the heat, rain, or Rome’s crowds. Tullius continued around the porticus to a path that ran alongside the Tiber and the bridge to the Insula. I’d taken this route when I’d run to fetch Marcianus from my ludus the day Floriana had been poisoned. The stench of the river grew stronger as we approached, carried by a breeze that scuttled the rain clouds.

  Tullius halted in a spot where the path was overgrown, hidden from both the bridge and the buildings by a clump of trees and scrub.

  “Here.” Tullius pointed dramatically. “This is where the body of Floriana was found, stabbed to death.”

  Cassia came forward, tablet in hand. She made a quick sketch of the path and river, marking notes alongside the diagram.

  “What’s she doing?” Tullius asked. “The vigiles already have their records … that’s how I found out about this place.”

  Cassia opened her mouth to explain, but I cut in. “I told her to.”

  Tullius looked curious, but shrugged and said no more.

  There wasn’t much to see. The bushes where Floriana had fallen were broken. A few footprints marked the mud, but the rain had washed most of them away. The marks of sandals would tell us nothing—all of Rome wore such shoes. Cassia sketched them anyway, and I did not stop her.

  Any blood had been washed away as well, either by the rain or a city worker. This spot was near public buildings, where important people might stroll on a sunny winter day, and the consuls would not want to upset their colleagues and clients with the reminder of a violent death.

  I gazed along the river to the arched bridge where people hurried to or from the island in the Tiber, wanting to be indoors before it was fully dark. I also wanted to be indoors, not liking that someone in Rome wanted me dead. What was to say they wouldn’t strike down my companions with me?

  “None would have seen the murder.” I turned from the river and studied the back of the theatre and the Porticus Octaviae. “The fog would obscure what happened, and that early, it still would have been dark.” A cold finger traced down my spine. This was the perfect place for an assassination.

  “Why did Floriana come here?” Cassia asked, her stylus busy. “She must have been summoned to meet her killer, or she asked him to meet her.”

  Tullius considered this. “She knew him, you mean? I thought it was done by a robber—they’d be thick in the dark and the fog, happy to find a victim in their snare.”

  “Odd weather for a morning stroll,” Cassia said. “And this spot is far from Floriana’s home. I would guess she had an assignation of some sort.”

  “With a lover?” Tullius offered.

  “She could bring a lover to her house,” I said. “Or meet him at his.”

  “A secret lover, then.” Tullius nodded with confidence. “One she didn’t want her women talking about.”

  “Possibly.” Cassia’s tone said she did not believe this, but she made another note.

  Tullius moved to my side. “We should go back.”

  The sun was sinking behind the river, silhouetting the arches of an aqueduct on the hills beyond. Clouds that had lowered on the city all day broke, and a streak of golden light glittered on the river and the stones of the aqueduct.

  The natural beauty did not negate our danger. This area would soon come alive with thieves, along with the desperate who trolled the river collecting flotsam or simply hunkered down on the Campus Martius to wait for stray wanderers. Floriana must have sorely wanted to meet with whoever killed her—she’d be canny enough to understand the peril of this lonely place.

  I gestured for Tullius to lead the way back to the main road. Cassia lingered, still jotting notes, until I took her by the arm and steered her after Tullius.

  A shadow flitted after us, or so I thought. I swung around, my knife at the ready, but I saw nothing, no one. The river rushed on, the breeze bringing only silence.

  Tullius decided to stop at a win
e bar and steady his nerves before heading back to his barracks. He invited me to drink with him, but I declined, and said good night.

  “We stay in,” I told Cassia once we reached our house. I firmly shut the door to our apartment and drew the bolt across it.

  “Wise.” Cassia negated my suggestion by opening the balcony and stepping onto it to shake out our cloaks.

  I joined her and peered over the edge. “I thought I saw someone following us.”

  “So did I.” Cassia finished and moved calmly back into the apartment, folding our cloaks as she went. “It was Lucia.”

  Chapter 15

  I shot a startled gaze over the balcony again before I strode inside. “Lucia? Are you certain? How could it be?”

  Cassia turned from hanging the cloaks, unworried. “Her hair is an odd and noticeable shade of red. I might be mistaken, but the shape of the face I saw under the cloak was the same. If not Lucia, it was a woman who looked much like her.”

  I remembered how fearful Lucia had been when she’d parted from me, bundled in the nondescript clothes Cassia had given her. “Why would she return to Rome? She was terrified.”

  Cassia set out her tablets—she had a dozen of them now, arranged in rows. “To kill you?” she suggested. “Perhaps when the other attempts on your life failed.”

  “Why should she want to kill me?” Lucia’s fear had been real, I was certain. “We helped her flee. You sent her to a place of safety ... if she went there.”

  “I do not know why. I only know that an attempt was made on your life today, and a woman who resembles Lucia appeared and followed us.”

  My bafflement grew. “Lucia has no reason to kill me. Even if she did, she could have done so any time I slept in her bed.”

  I didn’t like the qualm I had as I spoke. Of course Lucia wouldn’t wish me dead. Why would she? I had paid Floriana well for her—at least Aemil had—and I wasn’t brutish with her as some of Floriana’s clients could be.